E3 2009: Hands-On Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter

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Make your hero, make your world.

By Rus McLaughlin

Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter is a direct sequel to the original Drawn to Life (and the DS Next Chapter continues the story from the Wii Next Chapter), calling on your inner artiste to create a world, and then save it. We liked 5th Cell's DS Drawn to Life, so taking a pre-alpha build of Planet Moon's console version for a quick spin was a must.

The initial character creation is fairly true to the DS original, upscaled to the Wii. Once you've drawn your avatar with your Wiimote, you can unlock the joints and move limbs or heads around to whatever configuration you please for some genuine Quasimodo fun. Which, naturally, I did.

If you don't want to stare at a lopsided stick figure that looks like it was drawn by a blind epileptic for the entire 24 levels, you can use preset shape tools (ala any art program in the world) or go with a new set of pre-drawn character templates and features stamps (eyes, mouth, nose) instead. More templates can be unlocked, but can't be mixed and matched, which seems like a fairly big oversight. They can, however, be edited by the hand wielding the Wiimote.

If a zombie were actually drawn to life, wouldn't that kill it? Food for thought, people.

The game itself looks nice, though not spectacular... it's a fairly familiar platforming world of greens and browns and clouds, but that's where you come in. Frequent fill-in-the-blank nodes encourage you help shape the world and maybe color it up a bit. An early example let me tap C to go to the draw tools screen and scribble something unmentionable to be the bright red flowers littered throughout the levels. Later on, I got to change my own dear Mr. Stick Man as well. Drawing wings and adding them to Mr. Stick bumped him from a double to a triple-jump and glide, which took me even further when I caught some wind. More character mods, including more (and functional) appendages, weapons and vehicles will exist further into the game.

But the big new additions are the Action Drawing nodes, which let you puzzle your way out of situations on the fly, without going to the drawing pad screen. Coming up to a huge gap (conveniently covered by a dotted red box), I had a limited amount of ink to draw myself away across. There are three types of Action Drawing; this was a Physical puzzle, where physics applied. I wasn't able to simply bridge it, so instead I drew a rough two piece see-saw and ran like hell across it before it tipped too far and put me in the pit.

Later, I was able to create a quick boulder to roll down a hill and crush a heavy enemy, saving Mr. Stick a lot of effort. Standard-issue bounce-busting takes care of most others.

We didn't see the Bouncy or Sticky Action Drawing at work, but the Physical version worked very nicely indeed... very easy to see why that was the demo they brought to the E3 floor. I also liked staying in the game while I graffitied it up; going to the drawing pad does take you out of the action, even if it does give you more tools to work with.

Controls are pleasantly springy and responsive. But my other detraction is that puzzle-based and world building drawing is mapped to A, while in-game Action Drawing is done with B. Splitting out the same function to two different buttons just feels counter-intuitive.

Otherwise, Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter seems to be coming along nicely. It's not going to have the same wow factor it did two years ago, but developer Planet Moon is advancing the central conceit, including a two-player co-op mode that could be fun and, hopefully, upping the challenge considerably once past the intro level. We'll check back as its target Fall release date draws closer.